‘Neither, but to give to you for your parents to keep,’ she said sternly, moving to grab at a small drawing pad and putting it on the easel. ‘Now, go and sit over there…where you were when you were carving and sit still…or I’ll make you even uglier than you are!’
She cannot help but grin after a moment’s silence falls between them, meets his flirtatious answering stare and knows that there can be no turning back from this.
Manolo picks up on it quickly enough.
‘Uglier? No, you feel otherwise, señora…I know that.’
He had decided to wing it, to take a chance on what he said and to provoke a reaction from her. His prick had been teased long enough, by seeing the woman about the garden and the pool before the family had left. Now, Hannah would be on her own until paying holiday guests arrived at the weekend. His leave would also be drawing to a close, quite soon, so the clock was running down, and the time satisfy his hunger for the woman before him also.
‘Just sit still…and don’t be so foolish…talk nonsense,’ she told him on a dismissive shake of her head. ‘What possible interest can I be to a young man like you?’
Manolo pouted a knowing smile. ‘You have beauty others have still to learn of…brought on by their lives…and experience. I see that in you…señora.’
‘Oh really,’ she scoffed, moving in her seat to get a better look at his features, the wonderful glow on his healthy, deeply tanned and dark skin, the lustre in his closely cropped hair, the evident strength in his broad shoulders, in Manolo’s arms and hands. He is a landsman’s son, used to hard labour…but now, he flirts like a bar-room lothario and does so with her, a much older woman, someone who really should know better but who is, undeniably, captivated by him, possessed by an unquenchable need to live life out a little differently and even recklessly…to ‘kick over the traces’, so to speak.
‘May I see what you do?’
‘Yes, Manolo…but wait a few minutes more. It won’t be long now…and stop looking at me like that!’ She found it difficult to concentrate on what she sought to achieve under the young man’s provocative gaze upon her, a wondering look that she knew was meant to set her wondering…could that lusting look be made real.
‘It is easy to do…very easy to look at you,’ he retorted in his direct ways of it now that they were alone.
Hannah gives him a withering stare.
‘I don’t see, what you tell me you see, staring back at me from the mirror…’ she sighs, her words an expression of the gnawing emptiness that she has felt and that being ‘alone’ has brought. ‘Now, be quiet on that!’
He persists in his flirting with her, and she is dismayed by his evident hunger to be with and…and…and to know of her. She is surprised that their exchanges continue to be conducted in Spanish, her search for answer so much easier after a few days here, the words coming to her lips with little or no thought.
‘It is inside also…what the person…you, the woman, feels about who you are…and the woman I see…whenever we meet, like now. There is hope and there is beauty…still in you.’
‘Beauty…oh really?’ she repeated and beckoned to him, saw the purposeful strides as he closed the space between them, the dry sticks on the ground crunching under his feet. She met again Manolo’s wondering look upon her and took in the young man’s appearance, Manolo wearing a pair of shorts and a T shirt that he seemed to have outgrown, or his military regime had made too tight for his toned physique. Maybe that was all a part of the game…to have her look at him and to wonder…what next?
Manolo came to stand decidedly close and admired her work, looked at it and then at her. ‘Is that the hombre that you see, señora?’
Hannah nodded, the rim of her sunhat brushing his arm.
‘I have drawn the man I see…good looking…a little arrogant in his ways…but I suppose that there are women…or your girlfriends…who like that in you?’
‘But you don’t?’
‘I didn’t say that…Manolo.’
‘That is something…a start,’ he murmurs.
‘Yes, a start….’ she answers on a sigh, moving to brush down the hem of her skirt as the warm breeze catches it, revealing her fleshy, tanned thighs.
Hannah closed the folder and put it down on the seat. She pulled free the scarf that held her hat in place over her shock of short blonde hair, already bleached fairer by the sun when she lazed by the pool or from her walks with the dogs. She tanned easily, the faintest outline of her bikini to be seen, on her body, when she showered.
‘What do you mean by that…a start?’ he breathes out slowly, standing closer, still, until their shoulders touched.
‘Don’t do that!’
She had sought to move away from him, but Manolo’s arm encircled her waist. She felt a rush of sudden longing aroused by his first touch on her. She is dismayed to feel Manolo’s touch to the soft roll of flesh at her waist and she shifts, sought to stop the progress of his caresses but, with their fingers entwined, he waits until she slowly draws his hand to her breast, groans as he cups and gently squeezes it.
‘Could it be this…what we need from each other now…you beautiful woman? I…I can be company for you…while we are here together.’
She slowed him in his arousing claims upon her for only a moment. She is possessed by the brazen novelty of it, out here in the orchard, his coaxing words and questing touches soon lessening her restraint and arousing the rush of unbearable longing for him and that she knows will not remain unrequited. The possibilities were endless. She would show him, perhaps, how she wished for it to be instead of simply accepting what was being offered, Manolo had really made no secret of what he sought of her. She felt the ache of longing that his touches and looks upon her had aroused in her, but…
‘Don’t…don’t do that. I am not ready for your attentions or anyone else’s. It is too soon…’ she still tells him.
Hannah moved his hand, only to the skin of her waist once more. She sought to deny the shivers of longing that his continued touches upon her aroused, words of denial ignored. Manolo’s youthful vitality is in contrast with all that has gone before in her life, seducing claims that she had not sought of anyone else in these impetuous ways of it.
Hannah stilled the growls of the dogs on seeing him, a comparative stranger, so close to their mistress. They flopped down again in the little shade that could be found, panting slowly, rhythmically.
She looked at him, knew from the time she had spent sketching Manolo that it was fanciful to feel that there could be anything in it…anything between them. It would no more than something to boast of to his army chums…that he’d humped her…and that he would be unaware that she craved a diversion from her gnawing feelings of grief…that she would welcome the attentions of a man upon her body. Stephen had been an accomplished and attentive lover, sublime in his demands on her and in satisfying her needs. They had always been true partners in the act.
She had yet to fully accept that her bed would remain empty, that the warming touch of another and an enduring relationship with a man, and lover, might never be known of in those ways of it again.
Would her life now amount, in that respect, to an opportunistic liaison, no matter how satisfying it turned out to be and whenever and however it was to be found?
She was sanguine enough to know that she was not the possessor of a defining beauty.
Hannah met a kiss and felt Manolo’s fingers press and stroke in time with the flickering probe and thrust of his tongue as he found his way into her mouth,
insistent in its demands that they share in deepening kisses, the offering of caresses and clamp of hands to bare flesh.
‘You…you know how it is for me…go on!’ Manolo’s insistent calls were accompanied by the slow rhythmic press of his body against her, the fierce clamps of his hands to her hips, claims that would have her know what he would bring to her, what the sight of her in the figure-shaping blouse and flouncy skirt had aroused in him.
‘This is crazy!’ she groaned, Manolo’s caresses shattering any remaining control, ‘so crazy what you’re asking of me…for us to do here!’
‘That I want…want to share…with you! And yes…here.’
The lustful young man flattered her with his ardour, what she would know of impressive. She had felt the first moist rushes of longing, clamped his hands to the swell of her breasts, to her proud nipples, as she leant back against him to meet every touch upon her aching body, the churn of animalistic longing in her belly where he now put his hands.
She turned to him, placed one hand behind Manolo’s neck to draw him in closer, to place her lips on this man’s mouth. They felt warm and moist and parted as they shared in deepening, gasping kisses, their tongues as if engaged in an intimate dance of discovery and seduction.
‘Yes…touch me!’ she gasped, yes touch and kiss me there! ‘
Manolo had loosened the knot of her blouse and touched her bare skin, pinched her achingly hard nipples, cupped the tumble of her breasts that were now exposed to his gaze and touch, simply gloried in them, bent to kiss her bared skin.
‘So beautiful…so…full and beautiful,’ Manolo gasped as he now felt her hands wantonly clamp the swell in his shorts, as Hannah reached for him. ‘How…how can it be wrong for me to want you? You are a beautiful…wonderfully beautiful…and passionate woman. Don’t be afraid…señora…let yourself go and do that with me.’
She heard the seducing words, turned to meet his hungering look before she met a deep kiss, felt his fingers move below the stretchy waist band of her skirt, down over her mound to press her wet panties, the slow questing rhythm making her gush with longing. Hannah looked frantically about the olive orchard.